What Are the Best Free Puzzle Games?

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Quick Answer

The website IndieGames.com published a list of its best 2012 puzzle games, with a game called Corrypt reaching the top of its list for that year. All of these games come from independent developers and vary wildly in the types of challenges they give the player.

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In a different vein, IGN.com lists Papers, Please on its website as the Best PC Puzzle Game of 2013, as part of a yearly ranking. Papers, Please is a game set in an oppressive country where the players take the role of a border official assigned to manage the border of the fictional country he is from, while managing the very real and human issues that arise from the simplest decisions and trying to keep his family alive and fed.

As of February 23, 2015, Metacritic.com lists World of Goo at the top of their list of rankings for PC puzzle games, with Armadillo Run and Peggle Deluxe right behind it. These are games notable for their presence in the casual gaming market and are also games that were released before 2010, so they have retained a favorable opinion over time even from new players checking them out more recently and providing reviews for them. The Puzzle Quest series carries similarly high rankings on Metacritic for the original and the sequel.